Payam Feili, Sharanya Manivannan" />
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Alone in Babel, Arts & CultureJune 26, 2014

Round 1: Iran-Malaysia

PREAMBLE

Welcome to another day of much-better-than-football action from the Poetry World Cup. To date, we’ve had 14 matches, well over 1000 votes, and (to the best of our knowledge) 0 biting incidents. Today’s match has all the signs of another high-scoring thriller, and it brings together two poets whose relationship with their home countries is, as facebook would put it, complicated.

Iranian poet Payam Feili ‘has a dozen collections of poetry that haven’t yet seen the light of day.’ As an openly gay writer, he has suffered from having his work blacklisted by the censors at Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Nogaam, an independent publisher based in London, are helping to translate Payam’s poems into English as part of a campaign to fight censorship. Our World Cup poem, ‘Eleven’, has been translated anonymously and is part of ‘White Field’, a collection of Payam’s love poetry in English translation.

Sharanya Manivannan was Malaysia’s representative in the 2012 Poetry Parnassus, and represents Malaysia again in our tournament despite leaving the country in 2007 with the feeling that ‘Malaysia was a burnt bridge.’ She was subjected to the ire of the Malaysian government after writing an open letter on the demolition of Hindu temples, and her decision to represent the country at Parnassus wasn’t made lightly. Understandably, Sharanya Manivannan’s poetry frequently explores states of exile, and she has written that ‘To be of the earth is to be of exile, that much I already know.’

                         

Eleven

I blossom, and I grow tall
O! Boy, tender is my torso
This dark Yalda night, upon a high wall
I delve into your solitude, I delve into you

Beneath the moonlight
Through that distant forest
Deep in that listless lake
I catch a glimpse of you in the stars…

~ Payam Feili

Read the full poem (in English and Persian)

Poem for Clothes Left in Another Country

Sometimes you come back to me, invoked by accident
– a similar pigment, something almost kindred
in the way you absorbed the light – and I am
seduced, unstitched with the thought of you.
I come undone like a cascade of beads from the
broken filament of my memory…

~ Sharanya Manivannan

Read the full poem

 

RESULT: Iran won by 17 votes

Editor’s note: If, for any reason, you’re unable to vote in the poll, please leave the name of the poem/country you’d like to vote for in the comments. 

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Payam FeiliPoetry World CupSharanya Manivannan

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Previous articleReinventing the Reel: Neighbors
Next articleRound 1: Laos-Lebanon

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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